


Sink Back Into the Ocean

by waltzmatildah



Category: Savages (2012), Savages - All Media Types, Savages Series - Don Winslow
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath; <i>sweet dreams are... made of this</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Sink Back Into the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [matchsticks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/gifts).



1

                              (sweet dreams are  
          made of this.)

 

 

 

 

2

And in the aftermath, Ben says

         Please, and Oh God, and What…

And his eyes don’t blink anymore and O thinks, if she looks close enough, that she can see the thump and the pump of his heart beneath the torn remnants of last year’s Christmas gift

(Ben, Ben, oh sweet, warm Ben…)

and then he says  
         We’ve gotta get

         the hell  
         outta here.

So that’s what they do.

 

 

 

 

3

Chon buys them tickets. Disconnected flights that  
         loop  
         and criss-cross  
         and double back through billowing cumulonimbus and into the endless milky way.

There are no questions asked because, sometimes, when he falls statue still, O thinks about that time there was the barrel of a gun shoved hard between his back teeth.

And about how readily he’d conjured the steel needed to pull the trigger.

                    (He always did have tendencies towards that kind of happiness after all…)

 

 

 

 

4

         Look south.

The roaring Pacific Ocean is hard up against the twisted dolphins etched into her right shoulder. 

She pirouettes left. A full three sixty with her arms out-  
stretched

Then adds another not-quite-ninety-degrees.

Nine point five thousand miles, give or take, and now her toenails, OPI calls them Suzi – Pedal Faster Suzi - are sinking into sand that is less Laguna Beach and more

         powdered whale bones and the ethereal dust of countless ghosts, been and gone

                   but mostly gone.

Some things change. But also, some things?  
They stay  
                    exactly  
                                       the  
                                                 fucking  
                                                                     same…

There’s a sign. Sand-blasted and sun-baked. Welcome To 

                   The Skeleton Coast. 

(Which came first? she thinks. The chicken or the  
countless dead bodies?

Different west coast in a whole other hemisphere and O would laugh into the wind if she still remembered how)

 

 

 

 

5

we’re all going on a  
 _summer holiday_

 

 

 

 

6

They went to Lake Tahoe once. In TVMB.

(The Very Much Before)

Though it sure as shit hadn’t been summer then.  
                   O’d wanted ski goggles.  
                   O’d wanted skis.

                   O’d (pretended she) needed an excuse  
                   so they went to Lake Tahoe once.

But the problem with snow is  
          it’s cold  
                             it melts  
                                                 and then it’s wet

And not in a pacific coast kind of way.

O and Ben christened the hot tub on the balcony of their snow-capped condo.  
O and Chon christened the hot tubs on the balconies of their neighbours…

And then they left.

          So long  
          Farewell  
          Adieu  
          C’ya  
          Later  
          Folks

 

 

 

 

7

They’re in Scarborough now, just north of Perth in Western Australia. O takes to calling people  
          _mate_  
and saying  
          _no worries_  
at the end of every conversation.

She links arms, elbow to crooked elbow with her boys, and drags them stumbling into the supercharged surf. The beach beneath their feet slopes away sharply, and they’re waist deep and water slick in seconds. The stars above their heads, positively 

                   sing.

And it is the closest to normal she’s breathed in weeks.

 

 

 

 

8

Friend Request

Magdalena Sanchez.

 

 

Confirm.

 

 

 

 

9

No worries.

 

Those words, paired together like that, she thinks maybe they do not mean what she thinks they mean.

But neither Ben nor Chon have Facebook and what they don’t know

         might just get them all

                                       …

 

 

 

 

10

          She deletes the whole thing three days later.

 

 

 

 

11

Lightening forks the unfamiliar horizon like a neon tree, splits the early hours of the endless morning into slivered  
         silver  
                   shards  
                             she’s not sure will ever fit back together again.

The metaphor; an anvil. As momentarily blinding as the bolt of electricity had just been.

          Ben says, come to bed.

His hair is sleep-styled and she loops her fingers into his and pulls him down into the circle of her lap. 

          Just to make sure.

 

 

 

 

12

                   He still fits.

 

 

 

 

13

Dearest Paqu, she writes later, and the back of her hand is sunburned, pale pink skin pulled tight.

G’day mate… 

xx O

 

 

 

 

14

Mumbai pulsates.

O rents a scooter she has no idea how to ride and waits til midnight. Circles the hotel parking lot thirteen times while her wobble smooths to a more controlled forward-motion before pointing south. 

The 3.5 miles of bridge between  
         here  
                   and there  
is one of the most spectacular sights she’s ever encountered.

Afterwards, she slips her shoes off and presses her weight against the hotel room door, pushes it inwards, slow and sure and silent. 

She has lost four hours to the night and the lights and the oppressive dark and she can’t remember the point she began offering her secrets to the shadows instead of the sunshine. 

O is no longer who she once was. 

         She is both more.

         And less.

                   And one third of a whole.

 

 

 

 

15

The light from the streetlamp outside the streaked window spills, yellow and white and flashing bright, bright green, across Chon’s shoulder-blades, thin curtains pulled haphazardly askew.

         He is naked, she notes. He is naked and she is not.

But then she is, and they are, and she presses her lips to the nape of his neck, rests her cheek against the knobs of his spine as he arches slightly beneath her touch.

         Don’t do that again, he says, and she pretends she has  
         no  
         clue  
         what  
         he  
         means.

 

 

 

 

16

They keep up their unspoken tour of all the (other) west coasts by landing in Santiago at five minutes past eleven on a Tuesday night in late May. It’s just over two hours to Valparaiso.

O sleeps.

Lets her boys take the ever-spinning wheel.

Just for a little while longer.

                   Just for now.

 

 

 

 

17

          Colour is brighter here, she thinks. Yellows more yellow, and reds more red than she ever remembers them being previously.

 

 

 

 

18

It is Chon who comes to tell her, thick fingers tangling twisted into the long loops of her hair.

It’s time to go home, he says, whisper-soft, and she blinks fiercely. Waits for Chon to become Ben because whisper-soft is incongruous. Wrong.

Something is all wrong here…

                   It’s just my bones breaking, she thinks.

                   No worries.

                              (And it turns out new habits die  
almost as hard as old ones do…)

 

 

 

 

19

Out loud, O says only

          _Oh_

and 

          _Oh-kay_

 

 

 

 

20

And then…

          _Oh no._


End file.
